Essay On Tuskegee Airmen

The Tuskegee Airmen, also commonly referred to as Red Tails, were a group of African-American pilots who fought in World War II. These airmen were renowned for their fight against racial prejudices through their exploits in WWII. Despite of their struggles against racism they managed to prove whites mindsets wrong with their great achievements such as, never losing a single bomber under their escort to enemy fighters. Regardless of their skill, these black aviators returned to their country to find white attitudes were unchanged and joined another battle in pursuit of desegregating their military. Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of peaceful, but persistent confrontation, influenced the way Tuskegee Airmen’s challenge to confront racial barriers within the American military. Tuskegee Airmen, while simultaneously gaining the respect of whites, they also reformed of the black the image in the military.

During the early twentieth century, American whites conducted many studies on blacks that concluded blacks to be a mentally inferior subspecies of the human race with smaller brains than those of whites. Using this “scientific knowledge,” whites assumed that aviation technology was just too prodigious for blacks and that blacks were innately scared of flying. During the early part of the twentieth century, many whites in the military were convinced Africans Americans “lacked the mental capacity, aptitude, and reflexes” to fly planes; a misconception that was very far from the truth.

In fact, several black men across the nation had mastered many of the key technological aspects of flight. There were many black aviators amongst the earliest fliers of transcontinental flights. For example James Banning, who learned to fly from a...

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...ush to fly and that drive to prove to many that they were truly capable of aviation. Even though they had many honorable achievements, the Tuskegee Airmen was still subjected to racism. Their combat record did force many to be quiet because they were better than many whites. Notably bomber crews often would requested them for escort, because they had a higher probability of surviving, but on top of this other units continued to harass these airmen. Even if whites didn’t like the Tuskegee Airmen they had no choice but to respect them because they were the best around. This is what Booker T. Washington wanted His message was that it was not the time to challenge Jim Crow segregation but instead fight quietly and force whites to respect you. By doing this Tuskegee Airmen gained the respect of whites and slowly but surely reshaped the image of black in the military.